two little girls splashing in the water, and at Mrs. Husk, half undressed, sitting at the edge of the pool. Her long straight yellow hair, wet now, hung before her eyes; indolently, with languid grace, she was combing it. Mr. Graham watched for a few moments then backed off quietly, returned to the trailer and waited there.
All summer long Husk and his son toiled over the rocks above the trickling stream of the San Rafael. They struggled up the debris of talus slopes, clambered along ledges, pulled themselves up the boulder-choked defiles of side canyons. At every gray outcrop of Morrison and Shinarump, the uranium-bearing formations, they probed with the counter foot by foot, now and then getting a static of excitement from the instrument, and they hammered and picked at the rock and loaded their sack with specimens. During the middle of the day they rested in whatever shade they could find—under an overhang or juniper, sometimes under the truck itself—and in the evenings went painfully down to the stream to wash up a little and lug cans of water back up the trail. Much of the time they spent making a road for the truck, hacking through juniper stands, filling in washouts or blasting a hole down through rimrock in order to reach a slope. At night they camped wherever they happened to be, cooking their supper over an open fire and sleeping in the bed of the truck for fear of scorpions and rattlesnakes. And rose before dawn to resume the hunt, covering as much ground as they could before the glare and withering heat of midday.
About every two weeks Husk and Billy-Joe returned to Moab for fresh supplies and for repairs, parts and sometimes new tires for the truck. Each time Husk showed Mr. Graham the samples he had collected. All of them proved to contain a little uranium or thorium but none, according to the report of Mr. Graham’s assayist, were rich enough to be of commercial value. Mr. Graham did his best to encourage Husk, bought him drinks at the Club 66 and staked him to new batteries for the Geiger counter. Husk said that what he really needed was a new truck. Mr. Graham laughed, patted him on the back, and reminded him that he’d soon be riding around in Cadillacs.
Preoccupied—almost obsessed—with his work, Husk was only dimly aware of the change in his wife’s response to him. With each visit to the home camp she seemed a little more irritable, more disinclined to intimacy, somehow more distant. She submitted to his love-making with indifference, sometimes with reluctance. Husk was faintly troubled; but grateful on the other hand that she seemed so unconcerned by the rapid reduction of their savings and the so-far worthless results of his prospecting. Therefore he did not attempt to question her but returned to his search with anxious eagerness despite the heaviness in his heart.
One afternoon during the last week in August Mr. Graham sat in his office checking the action of the small pistol which he kept in his desk. He was alone. He loaded a clip and slipped it into the pistol, drew the slide back and pushed it forward, placing a round in the firing chamber. Carefully he let the hammer down and put the pistol into the pocket of a light jacket which he sometimes wore. Taking the jacket he went to his helicopter, filled the fuel tanks, climbed into the pilot’s seat in the center of the cockpit and started the engine.
Husk and Billy-Joe were cooking their supper over a fire of juniper sticks when they heard the thrashing racket of noise come over the edge of the mesa. The sun was down, the new half-moon hung nearly overhead. In the blend of sunset and twilight they saw the flickering lights before they saw the machine itself coming like a bright metallic dragonfly out of the east and circling once, twice above them before landing. The gusts of wind blew sand and twigs into their fire, into the open pan of corned beef and beans. Billy-Joe’s new straw cowboy hat took off from his head, whirled toward the brink of the mesa and sailed off into space. In silence they watched the tall figure of Mr. Graham emerge from the helicopter’s plastic bubble, stoop under the slow-turning blades of the prop and walk toward them.
Billy-Joe did not clearly understand everything that followed during the hour or more of conversation around the campfire. He knew that his father was unhappy even angry with Mr. Graham and the tone of the argument did not soften when Mr. Graham unzipped the left-hand pocket of his jacket and produced a half-pint of whisky which he passed to Billy-Joe’s father. Husk accepted the bottle and drank but soon afterwards was saying things which made Mr. Graham sit very still, very quiet, with a look on his face which frightened the boy. And after a pause Billy-Joe heard Mr. Graham say a thing about his new mother—his father’s new wife—that was strange and ugly.
His father stood up suddenly and roared. He stepped straight through the flames of the fire toward Mr. Graham. And Mr. Graham already standing, backing away, pulled the dark gleaming thing from his other jacket pocket, cocked it, thrust it forward. There was a flash of light and a small explosion. Billy-Joe saw his father stop, grab at his stomach, and lunge again at Mr. Graham. Who fired again. His father doubled forward, head close to his knees, and sank to the ground. Mr. Graham shot him a third time, in the back. His father, gasping and clutching at his belly, rolled slowly over onto one side.
Billy-Joe stood up wanting to speak. Mr. Graham shielded his eyes from the glow of the campfire and looked for him with the gun. Where are you, Billy? he said.
The boy could not say a word. But his body, his legs, reacted for him. He stumbled backward, turned, ran. Ran madly into the gloom. He heard the gun go off but felt nothing. He kept running and heard the heavy feet of Mr. Graham coming after him. He plunged through brush, through a tree’s branches and over the edge of a ravine. He felt himself falling, falling, then a stunning blow as he crashed into sand and went sliding and tumbling all the way down to the bottom of a great dune, all the way to the ravine floor. He tried to move and a sickening jet of pain coursed through his shoulder. He lay still on his back in the shadows, looking up at the scarp over which he had fallen. There was Mr. Graham silhouetted against the sky, walking back and forth, hunting for a way down. A few pale stars shone through the moonlight. The boy and the desert and the night waited in perfect silence for whatever might happen next.
Breathing hard, for he was really somewhat out of shape, Mr. Graham went back to Husk’s camp to get a flashlight. There he discovered that his partner was still alive, crawling inch by inch away from the now fading campfire toward the jeep truck. Mr. Graham paused, stepped carefully around Husk and went to the truck, which was parked with chocked wheels on a slope above the rim of the mesa. Beyond that rim the world dropped away at an angle of ninety degrees, down sheer for eight hundred feet or more to a talus of broken slabs in the bottom of a side canyon of the San Rafael canyon. Mr. Graham found a flashlight in the truck, also Husk’s rifle. He sat down on the runningboard to rest, to regain his wind, and watched Husk crawling slowly toward him.
When Husk was nearly close enough to reach the toes of his boots Mr. Graham shot him again, this time in the head and with the rifle. He dragged the body into the cab of the truck and slammed shut the doors. He thought for a while, then opened a five-gallon jerry can and poured gasoline over Husk’s body and all over the interior of the cab. He found a second gasoline can, unscrewed the lid and set it in the right-hand corner of the cab, on the floor. Mr. Graham was sweating badly, his hands shaking, his chest painfully constricted. He was about to light a cigarette but thought better of it. He sat down near the truck to rest for a while.
Thinking carefully, Mr. Graham decided to ease the truck down close to the edge of the mesa, stop it there and toss a match in on his partner before pushing the whole works over. The truck was parked parallel to the rim, not facing it, so Mr. Graham after removing the rocks from in front of the wheels climbed into the driver’s seat, pushing Husk’s legs out of the way, and automatically, out of habit, turned on the switch. He had almost stepped on the starter before he realized the danger. Without starting the motor he disengaged the clutch, took the truck out of gear and turned the wheels downhill. There was an awful lot of loose play in the steering. As the truck began to roll Mr. Graham’s right foot groped for the brake pedal, found it and pushed it down to the floorboard without meeting the slightest hint of resistance. In sudden alarm he grabbed for the parking brake and found the handle missing. There was nothing there. All at once Mr. Graham knew that more than anything else in the world he wanted to get out of that truck.
